Daily poll: Do you think your municipality should hire more cops?

It's often a hard sell, trying to tell fearful citizens that crime is down even though they know a neighbor who was robbed or mugged.

A couple weeks ago, several dozen protesters showed up at City Hall in Jersey City to tell city officials that they felt "under siege" by neighborhood violence.

According to the stats provided by the New Jersey State Police, there were 2,942 violent crimes in Jersey City in 2004, and 1,851 in 2010, the last full year for which figures are available. FBI stats show Jersey City had 1,829 violent crimes in 2010, while Newark, an only slightly larger city, had 2,885.

But those numbers are cold comfort to residents who have to duck inside the offices of a nonprofit to avoid flying bullets as some residents along King Drive in Jersey City had to do recently.

In Hoboken, two police unions are arguing that crime in worse, while Mayor Dawn Zimmer says crime has dropped nearly 16 percent since 2009.

The union honchos argue that the mayor and other city officials are comparing apples and oranges -- incidents local police respond to compared to incidents several police agencies respond to -- to make their case.

The unions are calling on city officials to hire at least 15 more full-time cops.
There is of course a cost to taxpayers to hire more police officers. But some would argue you can't put a price tag on safety.